WTO prefers to keep its own counsel on banking bail-outs

Letters to the Head of Business

5:42PM GMT 29 Nov 2009

SIR – The headline "Britain's bank bail-out may have broken rules, says WTO" (Sunday Telegraph November 22) is misleading because neither the World Trade Organisation nor our director general, Pascal Lamy, has ever made such a statement. For those interested in knowing what the WTO has said on this issue, they can read our latest report on trade and trade related developments in 2009 at http://www.wto.org

In any event it is not for the WTO secretariat to say whether any measure taken in any sector by any country is or is not in compliance with WTO rules. Only WTO member countries can raise such complaints in the context of our WTO dispute settlement procedures.

SIR – What little conflict there is between the British political parties today centres on the choice between government spending cuts and tax rises as a solution to the financial crisis.

Surely 80pc of the burden must fall on the state which has wasted our resources, failed to control debt, lost control of money creation, failed to regulate the banks and caused massive diversion of capital and people away from wealth creation and traded goods and services towards state bureaucracy. Gordon Brown's proposed Growth Capital Fund would be a farce. If successful companies need capital they don't need the Government to provide it. If poor failing companies are short of capital it is better they are denied it.

Rodney Atkinson, Northumberland

Banks have moral obligation on lending

SIR – The judgement of the Supreme Court that the banks are, in effect, free to charge what they like on unauthorised overdrafts is fair enough and people have every reason now not to incur them. The banks, for their part, have a moral obligation not to induce customers to take on more debt than they can afford to service. But will they? And if they do how and where will they levy new charges to to make up the lost revenue?

Kenneth Wood, Exeter

Was Mervyn's £62bn the tip of the iceberg?

SIR – Mervyn King has apparently just owned up to hiding a £62bn loan from us in what he considered to be our best interests. So he may well have lent another £1 trillion or two but the time is not yet right to tell us.

They can't be keeping Standard and Poor informed so our AAA rating is for the fairies.